Simple email inbox for discourse

[PrettyGirl]

Since the discourse Terms of service page does not allow to embed links, I was unable to redirect users to admin account as the main contact.

So I’m trying to setup incoming email handler/replier so I can handle official emails.

I tried to use the Plugin and it’s only for amd64 and I get errors as my architecture is arm64.

Is there any arm64 (instead of amd64) version of the email receiving/composing Plugin

If not, what are my options setting up a mail server etc (may a different docker container), however, I don’t want to disrupt the usual mailing behavior of discourse (user verification emails sent directly by discourse etc).

What I want to achieve?

1. Want to retain the usual behaviour of discourse without disrupting it’s emailing behaviour.
2. Need to have an fully functional email address to receive emails to admin@mysite.com and to send replies from that inbox. (just a simple inbox with reply functionality is perfectly fine, no need of fancy tools or spam filters)

I can have a free email address like admin_mysite@gmail.com etc, but it’s not professional at all.

What are my options?

Is it possible that we implement a very simple default email inbox in discourse with a reply button and a very simple composer window, to read and reply to emails?
(while wondering why discourse didn’t include a simple email inbox inside discourse as they know this is a basic requirement to have a professional contact point)

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

@PrettyGirl

what are my options setting up a mail server

I know answer for that. None. Don’t even bother to try. It is way too risky, difficult and expensive. And if you are customer to VPS-services as DigitalCloud they don’t even allow that.

I’m a bit lost what you are after, must be a language barrier again, but if you want to get emails to Discouse, ability to answer there and send response to customer/user Discourse can already that. I reckon search term would be like email. All you need is + -address (I don’ remember fancy name of that) and at least SES by Amazon offers it, I reckon.

[JammyDodger]

@PrettyGirl

Since the discourse Terms of service page does not allow to embed links, I was unable to redirect users to admin account as the main contact.

I’m also confused by this bit What do you mean when you say it won’t allow you to embed a link?

[PrettyGirl]

the links like []() get’s disabled in terms of services page. All other posts are fine. Only in legal pages like that. I thought it’s enforced by discourse.

[PrettyGirl]

you mean discourse has an email composer?

I was trying to receive emails to admin@mysite.com and send emails from that.

When someone (from gmail etc) sends an emails to admin@mysite.com, I should be able to read it, and reply to it. And the reply would be sent from @mysite.com domain.

example scenario:

to: admin@mysite.com
from: example@example.gov
email text: We have noticed some sections of our website’s Terms of Service that may require further clarification. Please contact us at your earliest convenience.

and I should be able to read the email, and I should be able to reply to that received email. Are you saying discourse already has that functionality? I’m not talking about user verification emails etc.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

Yes, we have a composer in Discourse

You can start from this, and do some searches more if needed — but you have already searched and that’s why I’m confused what is the real issue now.

Discourse as a private email support portal

Purpose We would like to set it up so Discourse can act as a private email support portal for a team. In this mode a single email address will be mapped to a category, all incoming mail will create new messages in that category that can be viewed by all the users with permission on the category. Users will be automatically provisioned as emails come in. Advantages over central email box Historically we have used a central email box for our team “support” this has proven to have quite a few draw…

Automatically set category email-in addresses

https://github.com/mozilla/discourse-auto-email-in This plugin takes 4 settings: auto_email_in_enabled auto_email_in_divider: Set the divider between a parent category slug and sub category slug auto_email_in_domain: Set the domain of the email-in addresses auto_email_in_append: Append new email-in addresses, rather than overwriting So with the default settings, when enabled, all category email-in addresses will be set to: <slug>@example.com or <parent_slug>+<child_slug>@example.com So,…

Configuring AWS SES for outgoing, bounce, and incoming email

I thought I’d share the configuration I came up with to use AWS SES for outgoing, bounce, and incoming email. There’s definitely some nuance to the SES service, and it took a good deal of trial and error to understand exactly how it works. This is more of a brain-dump than step-by-step-follow-the-dotted-line. It should be unnecessary, but use at your own risk. And by all means always read through and understand any code written by others you implement. Background: I’m working to deploy Discour…

[JammyDodger]

@PrettyGirl

the links like []() get’s disabled in terms of services page. All other posts are fine. Only in legal pages like that. I thought it’s enforced by discourse.

We have links and emails in our Terms of Service here on meta and they seem to work just fine?

https://meta.discourse.org/tos

[PrettyGirl]

I can only see a probable use of []() markup at Internet forum at https://meta.discourse.org in the first line at the beginning of the TOS. Can you please check if that link uses the markup []() to present https://meta.discourse.org link? are you sure you’re not using any other method like href tags to show the link?

For instance, can you embed [about](/about/) in the TOS?

[JammyDodger]

Some of them are just pasted in links that auto-linkify, like the one for meta.discourse.org, but others use markdown. (like the Creative Commons one further down)

The FAQs has more examples in, including one to the /about page ([friendly local staff](/about)).

You should have no issues using markdown links in those posts and having them display in the published page.

[PrettyGirl]

Not in the FAQ page, in the TOS page, can you use markup like []()? can you please check.

[JammyDodger]

I did check. (the Creative Commons example I mentioned)

Though the FAQ, TOS, and Privacy pages all work the same.

[PrettyGirl]

That’s strange. My TOS page cannot use markup like [](). don’t know if there are any invisible formatting has been applied to the page. Only option seems to be to try converting the whole page to unicode text and again re-format it with title headings etc.

[JammyDodger]

Are you using the default ones? If you click on ‘edit this page’ at the top it would take you to the underlying post where you can make any adjustments you need.

(Or just navigate to the relevant topic in your staff category)

[PrettyGirl]

Yes the default ones. In my TOS, the creative commons link is embeded as <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a>, it works fine.

It is not in the format of []() either. Only the []() are not functional in TOS.

[PrettyGirl]

Thank you for the comprehensive list of topics. I will go through them.

[JammyDodger]

@PrettyGirl

Since the discourse Terms of service page does not allow to embed links, I was unable to redirect users to admin account as the main contact.

@PrettyGirl

In my TOS, the creative commons link is embeded as <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a>, it works fine.

I don’t know why you have html ones, but at least they work. You could use that method instead if you didn’t want to dig any further?

If you go to /admin/customize/site_texts there’s a Replace Text button on the right which you can use to regenerate the text for the seeded topics. It’ll pull in the latest version (though will overwrite any changes you made, so save a copy if you do). Not sure if that will help in this case, but might be worth a try?

[PrettyGirl]

Will give it a shot. Thank you.

[Firepup650 (Firepup Sixfifty)]

Do you, by chance, have an HTML block near the top of your ToS/FaQ somewhere?
Like so:

<h1>Example</h1>
Text after this ***will not*** have _any_ formatting, including [links](https://example.com).

Result

Example

Text after this ***will not*** have _any_ formatting, including [links](https://example.com).